Tony Abbott’s plan to axe the carbon price this week has come in for some withering criticism from his own side of politics, with a former head of the UK’s Conservative Party declaring it to be an “appalling” move that “recklessly” endangers the future.

Lord Deben, who served in Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet and is now chairman of the independent UK Committee on Climate Change, said the Abbott government “appears to be more concerned with advancing its own short-term political interests” than dealing with global warming.

“Australia’s actions are appalling,” Lord Deben said in a statement. “While the 66 countries that account for 88 per cent of global emissions have passed laws to address global warming, Australia is repealing them.”

“Australia’s carbon price was already working. It was reducing emissions without any of the economic damage that people feared.''

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"Australia is changing Britain's climate as we are changing yours. It is not just a national matter. We are all in this together and Mr Abbott is recklessly endangering our future, as he is Australia's.”

Vote looms

Selwyn Gummer, Lord Deben. Photo: Peter Hannam

Mr Abbott has been campaigning to scrap policies placing a price on carbon since defeating Malcolm Turnbull to become Liberal leader over the issue in December 2009. Barring a last-minute change of heart by the Palmer United Party, the government expects to have the Senate votes needed to repeal the carbon tax late on Wednesday or Thursday this week.

It remains unclear whether an emissions trading scheme with a zero starting price, as proposed by Clive Palmer, has any chance of getting Senate backing.

“The government is repealing the carbon tax and replacing it with a policy that will actually work,” a spokesman for Environment Minister Greg Hunt said. “We know the carbon tax isn’t reducing emissions in a meaningful way. We need a policy that will allow Australia to reach our minus-5 per cent emissions reduction target (by 2020).”

Lord Deben, though, dismissed the 5 per cent target as weak.

“If China and the United States can start taking meaningful action, then surely Australia, one of the world’s largest per-capita emitters can too”, Lord Deben said. “This is a global battle and Australia’s 5 per cent emissions reduction target is too low a contribution. It needs to step up and show leadership.”

"Tony Abbott has taken Australia from an international leader to an international embarrassment," said Mark Butler, Labor's climate change spokesman. "(His) approach is in opposition to the efforts of the rest of the world, including those of his conservative colleagues in the United Kingdom."

Greens Leader Christine Milne said Lord Deben was "absolutely right", with Australia "throwing away the cheapest and most effective global warming policy we could have, with reckless disregard for Australians and people all over the world, especially those in vulnerable pacific island nations."

“It is dangerous and it shames Australia that our Prime Minister is ruled by ideology and his mates in the polluting fossil-fuels sector,...making Australia a pariah on the global stage and undermining efforts for a global treaty," Senator Milne said.

A ReachTEL poll conducted last week for the Australian Youth Climate Coalition found 58.3 per cent of the 2195 residents polled by telephone agreed that Australia "should have some form of price on carbon for companies with high emissions", including almost one in three Coalition supporters.

One quarter of those polled disagreed - including 43.3 per cent of Coalition voters - and 16.7 per cent were undecided.

Goals

The UK has a binding target to cut emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, and wants the European Union to raises its ambitions to a 30 per cent reduction by the 2020 from the current 20 per cent goal.

“Even during these tough economic times we have increased significantly our climate change measures,” Lord Deben said. “There is no economic reason to stop Australia doing the same.”

The US has a goal of cutting emissions by 17 per cent on 2005 levels by the decade’s end, while China last week issued a global tender for advice on setting up a national emissions trading market within years.

Australia's emissions fell 0.8 per cent in 2013, the largest annual drop since records began 24 years ago. Emissions in the power sector - the main industry covered by the soon-to-be-scrapped carbon tax - are down about 11 per cent since the introduction of the carbon price two years ago, according to energy consultants Pitt & Sherry.

The government's alternative to the carbon price - the $2.55 billion direct action plan to pay polluters - faces possible blocking in the Senate, although Mr Hunt is confident the program can operate with existing legislation.

Early alert

As UK prime minister, Mrs Thatcher was one of the first global leaders to identify climate change as a threat.

She told a 1988 meeting of the Royal Society the increase of greenhouse gases had led some “to fear that we are creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability. We are told that a warming effect of 1 degree per decade would greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habitat to cope”.

Since then 1990, greenhouse gases have increased their warming potential by 34 per cent, the World Meteorological Organisation said earlier this year. Science continues to observe impacts of a warming planet, while modelling points to the potential for much bigger effects to come.

Research released this week by the University of NSW, for instance, indicates circumpolar winds are accelerating in part because of the build-up of carbon dioxide. Modelling indicates these winds could rapidly accelerate the melting of Antarctic ice sheets by disrupting the delicate balance of cool and warmer coastal waters. As a result, global sea levels may rise much faster than previously thought.

360 comments

Bud Abbott also does not believe in atoms as he has never seen one!

Commenter

G Sacramento

Date and time

July 08, 2014, 12:47PM

Tony only believes in invisible friends, not invisible substances

Commenter

RobE

Location

Sydney

Date and time

July 08, 2014, 1:27PM

I don't get you lefties; our Liberal government will ensure our economy is in as good shape as possible and all within this term or next!

You bleeding heart lefties, wanting to vote in Greens & Labor, would see our economic propserity damaged in place of environmental fairy tales; which even if they might be right aren't going to bother us for decades; by then I'm sure we'll have invented something to fix it all anyhow.

Don't you want the latest & greated 4D tvs, the largest cars on the street and a smart phone thats either bigger, or smaller than your friends (depending on the fashion of the week)? Liberals can give you that! (well, some of us)

Believe the propoganda; vote Liberal and someone gets richer; vote Greens or Labor and the world will end.

Commenter

Davo

Date and time

July 08, 2014, 1:59PM

But he believes that wind farms cause sickness and kill birds. Wait until he finds out what KFC does?

Commenter

The Colonel

Date and time

July 08, 2014, 2:00PM

Davo, they lack facts so they turn opinions in to facts

Commenter

Tired Camel

Date and time

July 08, 2014, 2:04PM

@G Sacramento:Tony Abbott passionately believes in one thing, power. Never mind that in this single minded pursuit the future of the nation and the world comes a very distant second. He replaced Turnbull over a dispute about the best way to tackle climate change and has been true to his blinkered fellow believers in government ever since. To change his stance now would put his leadership at risk at that is the holy grail of his existence.

Commenter

JohnC

Location

Gosford NSW

Date and time

July 08, 2014, 2:06PM

Attack the policy not the man. Questioning Abbott's intelligence is not a good enough reason to hold on to the carbon tax

Commenter

Piped Piper

Date and time

July 08, 2014, 2:11PM

I'm assuming Davo (1:59pm) must be joking. He MUST have his tongue in his cheek...yes???

Commenter

Dan

Location

VIC

Date and time

July 08, 2014, 2:18PM

@Tired Camel and Davo. So now they turing opinions into fact? Climate Science is now an opinion? Well...it is the opinion of the 97% of the science community who base their "opinion" on data and fact...rather than their hip pocket or the welfare of the coal and petroleum industry. If you're going to spin an argument and defence for the Government it has to have at least a modicum of reason and truth.

Commenter

Alpheus Williams

Location

Red Rock

Date and time

July 08, 2014, 2:28PM

Davo, every Labor government has left the country better off. It was Hawke and Keating that introduced economic reforms that we now benefit from today Howard and Costello did nothing for our future. Abbott is going to leave us with a huge financial problem by killing cutting edge new energy projects. The rest of the world moves on technologically and we are now going backwards.

Outdated, redundant rhetoric like yours exists in another reality. Old time slogans shows you are out of time mate.